


how easy you are to need

by OccasionallyCreative



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coruscant (Star Wars), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Alive, F/M, Mentions of past abuse, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:16:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22607623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/pseuds/OccasionallyCreative
Summary: The war is finished, yet Rey still carries wounds. They come in the form of nightmares, but Ben is there to comfort her.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 20
Kudos: 197
Collections: For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	how easy you are to need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crimson_Alchemistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimson_Alchemistress/gifts).



> Prompt 1 - Ben comforting Rey about her insecurities and abandonment issues, w/ very soft sad Rey
> 
> Happy Valentine's, Reylos! Have some gentleness in these trying times. Though Ben is alive in this oneshot, this fic does mention/depict events from TRoS and if that's not your bag, I get it.
> 
> Other than that, enjoy and please don't forget to comment/leave kudos if you like this ❤️

“Ben,” she breathes, barely daring to brush his broken, bruised, unscarred face with the tips of her fingers. She was dead. Listless, floating among stars, up and up towards the light waiting for her.

“I’m a selfish being -” Ben starts, but Rey darts her head forward and presses her lips to his. Words are for later. Right now, Palpatine is dead. She’s defied the destiny her grandfather carved out for her, and all she wants to do is kiss Ben Solo. Kiss him and kiss him until she can’t feel herself anymore; just feel him. The boy who defied the Dark, the boy she loves…

But his body goes limp.

Rey frowns, pulling back. Traces her fingertips over his lips. The violent red of his mouth fades, quicker and quicker, his body becoming a heavy, dull weight.

“No…” She scrambles to catch him but it doesn’t stop the crack of his skull against the stone. “No, no!”

Her throat goes raw with the force of her scream of his name.

“BEN!”

She’s drowning. Lost among itchy furs and too hot silk sheets. Sweat drenches her, and her vision blurs with tears. 

A figure runs into the room, sitting on the bed and engulfing her into a hug which smells of hearth smoke and spices.

“It’s okay,” the voice says evenly, firmly. Rey pants, pulling at his grey sweater for grip. “Breathe. Count with me.”

“You were gone,” Rey says between sobs and she screams into his upper arm, the pain of the words alone too much to bear. “I couldn’t save you.”

“Listen to me.” The voice is firmer now, but no less gentle. “Count. 1… 2… 3.”

Rey repeats the count over and over until her sobs are quiet hiccups and her tears are stains on his clothes.

Still hugging her waist, Ben swings her onto his lap so she’s straddling his lap. She helps him pull off his sweater and hugs his neck, burying her nose in his hair.

“I can take it,” he told her when she first expressed concern she might hurt him. “I promise.”

There was something unspoken in that. Her tears staining his sweaters was nothing compared to the war, and the days before the war.

For him, Snoke and Palpatine are two different entities. Palpatine was the galaxy’s enemy; Snoke was his abuser, the one who stoked the flame of darkness on behalf of his master. Rey has never asked him who is worse. Sometimes she wants to revive them both so she can kill them for him.

That’s the darkness within her, the demon that comes into her dreams and torments her with images of Ben’s death. In truth, he was silent for only a moment -- a long enough moment, where the silence of him echoed inside her head, around the crumbling walls of the temple -- before he blinked awake, his vision clearing. His right hand held her waist and he’d blinked up at her.

“Ow,” were his first words. A bubble of laughter broke through her tears and she’d thrown her arms around him. She’d babbled her relief in words in disbelieving, breathless announcements of _you’re alive, you’re alive_ and _you’re here_.

“Tell me again,” she says now, brushing her palm over his heart. Counting his heartbeats. One… two… three. Ben’s fingers thread through her hair, his whole body a comforting cocoon as he draws them back to the bed. He lets out a breath as they lie on their sides, Rey curling into his embrace.

“You’re so warm,” she mumbles and she can feel his laugh, even his _smile_.

“I know,” Ben whispers. He squeezes her hip. His hand traces over the line of her waist, up to the high of her back. After silence, he speaks. His voice never raises beyond the natural, comforting timbre of a whisper. “At first… what I saw was bright. Bright, vivid blue. All around me. It took me a moment to realise who, what, I was looking at. They were the Jedi of the past, Rey. You called to them. I thought they’d abandoned me. But they were all there… my grandfather, Anakin Skywalker… my mother.”

She sighs, a smile coming to her lips. They both know that it’s not the story that comforts her, or indeed, him. It’s the presence of one another. Of being this close together, the freedom of the intimacy they can share now. During the war, as her head spun with new revelations and an unknown destiny secretly forged, she could scarcely breathe.

Now, though, she has the time she craved, for all those harsh years on Jakku.

“I’m going to the garden,” she says eventually, and he nods in return. She drops a kiss on his temple, feeling him hum at her touch but too comfortable to move, and slides out of his arms, climbing out of their too-big bed. (She got too comfortable with cribs on cramped Resistance bases and her hammock in her AT-AT on Jakku to think of a king-size bed as anything other than ‘too big’. But she’d rather spend a thousand evenings losing herself to Ben in Hapan dreamsilk than one night lost in the sand again.)

On her way, she stops off in the kitchen to make herself some spiced tea. The Gatalentan variety was sweet enough, but the spiced flavour warmed her bones. Cleared her head. Wrapping her palms around the wide, flat cup, she shuffles onto the balcony.

The Resistance had chosen Coruscant as its new base. It was familiar to other cultures, making the idea of negotiations an easier pill for them to swallow, and helped the mission to rebuild the New Republic just that little bit simpler. 

The endless rush wasn’t exactly the pace she would’ve picked for their first home together. She had, has, ideas of settling somewhere with greenery and the slow waves of a calm ocean. She daydreams of Ben working with her to build their new home together. Sometimes there’s a little girl, or a little boy, with his black hair and her brown eyes, running around their feet.

She steps over the threshold of their apartments onto the balcony. The garden is thick with the scent of flowers from every corner of the known galaxy. Ben had given her use of his family’s wealth almost as soon as he was able. It felt odd, uncomfortable at first, to be possessing of such endless possibility. She was too used to having only her imagination.

So she gave herself a project. Her clothing, she would make that herself (however much that annoyed Ben, who she knew wanted to see her comfortable in rich wools and silks), and she would still wear her shoes down to holes. Every penny went into her piece of green.

Endor roses glow against the early morning sunlight, their stems wrapped around the hard durasteel balcony rails. Honeyblossom is planted in rows next to jade roses, which are just beginning to bloom. Sunburst flowers face the sunrise, opening at the first rays that appear over the horizon through Coruscant’s towers.

With some effort and experimentation, she’s managed to breed some Alderaanian flowers too. The starflower, they are called, small and blue. Quite insignificant in the day, but twinkling in the dusk and, in the darkest hours of the evening, they are jewels, casting dappled shadows on the yellow stone courtyard.

Above her are the low trails of a weeping willow. They brush her shoulders like greeting an old friend. The flowers sing as she passes her fingers over them, stroking their petals and willing them to grow. 

Water is good enough, but this garden shines with the Force. 

Rose joked when she saw the final product, that Rey’s garden could be seen from the stars.

It’s her favourite place in Coruscant, aside from Ben.

She’s engulfed with his warmth again as he wraps his arms around her waist, stepping up from behind her. He kisses the underside of her jaw.

“Mm. Bored?”

“Without you? Always.”

It’s so domestic. The way they gently rock together, listening to the gentle rush of Coruscant traffic beyond their little refuge. The way Ben sincerely, eagerly listens with his chin tucked against the space between her neck and shoulder to Rey’s updates on the garden.

“The starflowers are taking beautifully,” she says, finishing her report. The sun slowly rises, casting long shadows. “I’m thinking of asking Chewie about procuring some Mysess blossoms.”

“And then, every flower from the galaxy.”

“Apart from the ones that eat people.”

“Yeah, maybe not those.”

She chuckles and Ben’s joining laughter vibrates against her back. Smiling, she turns in his arms and cups his cheek.

“Good morning,” she says finally, reaching up onto her tiptoes as he bends his head, capturing her in a kiss.

She has yet to grow bored of kissing Ben Solo. She doubts she ever will. He kisses with hunger and joy in equal balance, his tongue sliding past her lips, begging for access. Sometimes she’ll deny him, deny him enough that a soft whimper passes his pinked lips and “please” comes thick and deep from his throat.

This morning, he begs with his touch. Left hand on her hips, pulling her close, right hand on the space between her shoulder blades, his long fingers touching the nape of her neck, clutching gently but fervently at locks of her hair.

“I’ll never abandon you.” He sinks to his knees, slowly pushing up the hem of her shirt with one hand, his other pulling at the band of her shorts. He tilts his chin up, those ancient, dark eyes looking into her with the purest expression of love. It dazzles her. “I’m here.”

_I’m here_ , he whispers when the nightmares invade. _I’m here_ , he murmurs against the soft skin of her belly. He brushes the tip of his thumb over where he spoke the words as if writing them into her body, her blood. She shudders with the thrill of it. _I’m here_ , he thinks across their bond as he kisses her cunt.

Only once she has come, with a tremor down her spine and a cry, does he speak again.

“Until the day you tell me to leave…”

“Never.”

“You could tire of me.” A slice of fear cuts the softness in his tone.

“Don't even think that.”

He helps her lie on the stone, stuffing her shirt under her head and his shirt under the low of her back.

He kisses her, letting her taste herself on his tongue. She grows wetter, guiding his hand to her centre. He slips one finger past her folds. 

She gasps, clutching his bicep. Hurries, clumsily, to kiss him and there’s a clack of teeth.

“Sorry,” she mumbles and he laughs.

“It’s okay,” he replies, cupping her cheek with his free hand. He kisses her cheek. “You’re okay.”

He returns his tongue to her centre, keeping a finger, then two fingers, on her clit, bringing her slowly, carefully to a gentle, thundering orgasm that makes her tremble.

“You’re perfect,” Rey blurts out. Ben stops for a second, raising an eyebrow. He teases her, slowly withdrawing his finger. She whines.

“Hey…”

“Patience,” he admonishes. He licks his digit clean, those eyes of his never leaving hers. It’s intense, burning. Rey could be consumed if she’s not careful. Coruscant’s rising sun peeks through the towers. The sunburst flowers unfurl their petals, Ben strokes his palm up her torso, dancing the tips of his fingers across her collarbone before he kisses her temple, her forehead, and slides his hardness into her.

She welcomes him with a deep, throaty sigh. Wraps her legs around him, tugging him nearer.

“Never abandon you…” he says into her ear, grunting and groaning. Her brain swims with power. It’s a heady thing, knowing she’s making him this way, making him this... _primal_. They, together, are ancient. “Beautiful…”

“You came back,” she breathes, panting as she feels another climax at the base of her spine, in the beat of her heart. He sinks his fingers into her hair, guiding her to his mouth for kisses like a man starved.

_Be with me_. She passes the words through the bond.

“Come for me,” she says, as her climax judders through her body, bringing happy tears to her eyes as she feels him, hot, fill her core.

Later, as they lie side by side in their bed of dreamsilk with wet skin from their shared shower, he tells her he will take her to Chandrila. A place where the breezes blow gentle, the seas are calm and the mountains disappear into the horizon.

“I would like that,” she says, drifting off to sleep. He caresses her cheek. He smiles at her. The smile only she sees; not the mirthless smile he gives at one of Poe’s bad jokes, or the polite smile he gives to arriving negotiating parties. This one is all light and Ben Solo, wide mouth and teeth and untempered joy. 

“Sleep well, Rey Solo.” He is intimate, voice thick with his approaching sleep. “And thank you.”

“Back at you,” she murmurs.

She sleeps peacefully, without nightmares.

It is the first of many.


End file.
